Preferences for Complementary/Alternative Medicine (QF: The View from Here)

This series of posts results includes excerpts from information shared with a journalist in August of 2015 who had questions about the Quiverfull Movement as it related to the Duggar Family.

Find the Index of all posts HERE.

Find the previous post HERE.

Question:

Can you elaborate on the experiences you've heard from survivors of the QF cult? The lack of healthcare, emotional and physical abuse, risks of so many pregnancies and births, girls being robbed of their own childhoods, shame surrounding bodies and sex et cetera. It would be great to flesh those as a little so the readers can really understand the terrible impact of these on the women that you've helped.

Raising Children, Response Part Four:

Owing to both cost and preference, some families pursue addressing the psychological cause of illness or Complementary and Alternative Medicine before seeking traditional allopathic diagnosis and treatment for their children. (Bill Gothard promotes both of these options and does encourage his followers to pursue them without equal stress upon the responsibility to provide adequate care, nor does he define what is responsible or adequate.) Again, I truly hope that this is the exception and not the rule for young women within this population, but there are young women who do not have access to medical care and some that are not permitted to seek care if their parents decide that it is not necessary. Some families require young women to pay for their own care if it is necessary.

Initial departure from the home can be a struggle, and young women often need to contact law enforcement in order to obtain their identification documents from their parents when they leave the home. Young women fear seeking this assistance from law enforcement for many reasons that include the fear of the potential triggering of a Child Protective Services investigation. Children have been taught from a young age that CPS targets homeschoolers and wants to remove them from their homes, so it is believed that this terrible tragedy would destroy their families.

Obtaining help from friends can prove quite volatile, risky, and intimidating also. Once these young women leave, they must find someone who is willing to take them in and support them until they can do so for themselves. Many cannot drive and may not have identification records to obtain. I have a personal concern that with the popularity of home birthing using lay midwifery, some young women lack birth records, as certain sectors within the subculture believe that such identification is intrusive. 

Because of the emerging problem faced by those like Alecia Pennington whose parents refuse to sign documentation confirming her birth and citizenship, the State of Texas is now considering ratification of the Identification Abuse Bill to aid those born in the QF/P movement with documentation that will allow them to obtain education, employment and healthcare.

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~ Cynthia Kunsman

The view of Quiverfull from my vantage

August 2015